noticeboard.ru.ac.za

2008/11/09 - Unscheduled Internet Outage
About two hours ago, we lost Internet access to all international web sites (including .za sites hosted overseas). Users will most likely be experiencing this as an ERR_DNS_FAIL or ERR_CONNECT_FAIL error when trying to access affected web sites. Nationally hosted web sites are unaffected.

The problem was reported to TENET's service disk shortly after it occurred. We're informed that it affects all TENET sites that route via their Cape Town international gateway, and is most likely a result of a known circuit failure in Docklands, London. The Internet Solution's standby network engineers are currently investigating the problem.

IS has just confirmed that the problem is caused by a failed optic in London. They're currently trying to get the optic replaced and, failing that, they'll re-route TENET's traffic via a different port. They've given an estimated time-to-repair of about 40 minutes.
QUOTE(TENET @ Nov 10 2008, 04:15 PM)
Shortly before 18h00 last night, international bandwidth service to the entire GEN3 network failed, and was not restored until shortly before 22h00 - an outage of about four hours. The cause of the outage was a hardware failure in London - either a connector or a port (the exact detail is not yet known.)

This is the second time in a relatively short space of time that a failure in London has seriously affected GEN3 clients (and also caused Internet Solutions to miss their monthly availability target). We'll be discussing the matter with IS and will report back on the service improvement planning that we hope will arise out of these incidents.

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